I'm a leftist. But one of my big disagreements with the consensus of the left is their attribution of false equivalence to the aspirations of the Israelis vs the Palestinians. I'm not necessarily against any Palestinian aspirations toward statehood. But I strongly deny any claim they might make at having earned it.
In 1948 the Jews of Palestine declared the establishment of the State of Israel, regardless of that rather silly United Nations General Assembly resolution giving their assent to a two-state partition. Though the Israelis were gratified at this moral approval, that's all they got out of it. There was zero real help from the UN. The Israelis had to fight, outnumbered, to keep and hold their state. They did so valiantly and quite successfully. Alone. This, in itself, entitles them to their state.
They weren't entirely successful. They were unable to kick the Egyptians out of the Gaza strip. Where the Egyptians should not have been, by the way. For the nineteen years after that that the Egyptians held the Gaza strip, the Egyptians treated those Palestinians abominably. Though today's Egypt is different from that of King Farouk, it wouldn't hurt for the world to remember their part in establishing Gaza as it stands today. At least Egypt does not seem to be churning the waters anymore. That's worth something.
And my heart really does bleed for those Palestinians who would really rather just live their lives without fighting the people around them. These are the sort of people who I most approve of. They do have my sympathy.
But there comes a time when even those who don't want to fight must pay the price for tolerating vipers in their midst for too long.
Does this sound harsh? Perhaps. But I'm only trying to be realistic. Sometimes this world is a very harsh place. You can bet that I hope and pray that neither I nor my loved ones ever find ourselves in the predicament that I'm describing. And if it ever does happen, then you can bet that I'll be singing a different tune. And I'll be wrong.
We've been through a few of these Gaza wars in the last decade now. It follows the same pattern. The Israelis decide that enough is enough and the latest provocation can not go unanswered. Then our Secretary of State pays a bit of lip service to the notion that they do, indeed, have the right to defend themselves. But then he/she starts the real work of building a coalition of nations to pressure them to stop the hot war and let things go back to just the way they were in order that the whole terrible story can repeat itself a few years later. That's a terrible way to handle it.
We should allow and encourage the Israelis to really, really mop up the people who deliberately target women and children. It's unfortunate, yes, but this will mean that a lot of women and children who live amongst the bloodthirsty ones will be caught in the crossfire. But the survivors will at least have the hope of a better future. They do not have it now.
One pretty likely future, if we keep on going the way we have been, is that people like Hamas gain more and more sophisticated weapons. It wouldn't surprise me a whole lot if a fission bomb from Pakistan or North Korea is not too far out of the hands of, say, Hezbollah. If so, then a fission bomb in the hands of Hamas is not out of the question a bit further down the road. Hezbollah, today, might be a little too rational for this, but tomorrow may change things. What if one of them sends such a bomb into Haifa harbor, smuggled in a ship, and detonates it? The Israelis might decide that the end, one way or another, is near and that it's time for really drastic measures. (I can even see the logic.) This might mean that her enemies get deliveries from Israel. Tehran? Likely. Damascus? Riyadh?
At this point some other bad actors might decide that it's time to settle their scores. At that time we might see ship-bombs in other harbors, well away from the action. Some of our own cities would be possibilities.
Am I reading too much danger into this? Possibly. I hope so.
But tolerating people like Hamas is just begging for trouble.
The Palestinians want their own state. I can sympathize. But they have not yet earned their state. They can do so by either destroying the State of Israel and taking over or by coming to peaceful and cooperative terms with the State of Israel and keeping Gaza and the West Bank.
They have done neither. And, so, have not earned their state.
The Israelis have earned their state and they are the ones who deserve our sympathy.